Valentine's Day: Religious Origins and Background

According to one story, Roman emperor Claudius II imposed a ban on marriages because too many young men were dodging the draft by getting married (only single men had to enter the army). A Christian priest named Valentinus ignored the ban and performed secret marriages. He was caught, of course, which meant that he was imprisoned and sentenced to death. While awaiting execution, young lovers visited him with notes about how much better love is than war — the first “valentines.”

As you might have already guessed, the execution occurred in 269 CE on Februrary 14th, the Roman day dedicated to celebrating love and fertility. After a couple of centuries (in 469, to be precise), Emperor Gelasius declared it a holy day in honor of Valentinus instead of the pagan god Lupercus. This allowed Christianity to take over some of the celebrations of love and fertility which had perviously occurred in the context of paganism.

Another Valentinus was a priest jailed for helping Christians. During his stay he fell in love with the jailer’s daughter and sent her notes signed “from your Valentine.” He was eventually beheaded and buried on the Via Flaminia. Reportedly Pope Julius I built a basilica over his grave. A third and final Valentinius was the bishop of Terni and he was also martyred, with his relics being taken back to Terni.

The pagan celebrations were reworked to fit the martyr theme — after all, early and medieval Christianity did not approve of rituals that encouraged sexuality. Instead of pulling girls’ names from boxes, it is believed that both boys and girls chose the names of martyred saints from a box. It wasn’t until the 14th century that customs returned to celebrations of love and life rather than faith and death.

It was around this time — the Renaissance — that people began to break free of some of the bonds imposed upon them by the Church and move towards a humanistic view of nature, society, and the individual. As a part of this change there was also a move towards more sensual art and literature. There was no shortage of poets and authors who connected the dawning of Spring with love, sexuality, and procreation. A return to more pagan-like celebrations of February 14th is not surprising.

As with so many other holidays that have pagan roots, divination came to play an important role in the development of modern Valentine’s Day. People looked to all sorts of things, primarily in nature, in order to find some sign about who might become their mate for life — their One True Love. There were also, of course, all sorts of things which came to be used to induce love or lust. They existed before, naturally, but as love and sexuality came once again to be more closely associated with February 14th, these foods and drinks came to be associated with it as well.

Today, capitalist commercialism is one of the biggest aspects of Valentine’s Day. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on chocolate, candies, flowers, dinners, hotel rooms, jewelry, and all sorts of other gifts and whatnot used to celebrate February 14th. There is a lot of money to be made from people’s desire to commemorate the date, and even more to be made in convincing people to employ any number of new means to celebrate. Only Christmas and Halloween come close in the way that modern commercialism has transformed and adopted an ancient pagan celebration.

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